10/28/13

"Man is the moral center of this world"

“NO; that argument about man looking mean and trivial in the face of the physical universe has never terrified me at all, because it is a merely sentimental argument, and not a rational one in any sense or degree. But if we are seriously debating whether a man is the moral center of this world, then he is no more morally dwarfed by the fact that his is not the largest star than by the fact that he is not the largest mammal. Unless it can be maintained a priori that Providence must put the largest soul in the largest body, and must make the physical and moral center the same, “the vertigo of the infinite” has no more spiritual value than the vertigo of a ladder or the vertigo of a balloon."